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Basic human physiology & nutrition in schools
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KetoneKaren wrote: »Don't I remember that it was actually ketchup that was a vegetable?
I remember when a magazine, Time, I think, ran a photo of a bottle of ketchup and the caption:
"Now a vegetable."
So sad.1 -
Well hey, if ketchup counts as a vegetable then the sauce on a pizza counts too, right?
One problem that I see in teaching anyone nutrition is that there is often a giant disconnect between the ideas the teacher puts out there and how people see their own behaviors around food. As a caregiver for adults with disabilities, I have sat right next to my house manager in a class taught by a registered dietician. The dietician said that 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables on the food pyramid was just to get us warmed up, that research was showing 8-12 servings of fruit and vegetables per day would significantly improve and in some cases reverse many major diseases (forgive me not being more precise, this class took place well over six years ago, my memory is not that great). The menus for the location we worked at struggled to work in 4 servings. Following the class there was zero effort to increase that. And in fact, when I would plan a meal and include more than one vegetable, house manager would question me about it. At another location with someone on a very strict 1200 calorie diet, repeated talks about following the very carefully designed menu, portion sizes, healthy eating, one of the other staff said, "but it's an apple, an apple is healthy no matter how big it is," when I tried to tell her that she needed to cut one of those big, 4-inch diameter apples in half for the person on the diet. I also had that staff member randomly bake sweets - again, after repeated talks about following the menu exactly, no extras - and try to justify it by saying, "well I looked up a low fat recipe, that makes it healthy."
People hear the information on nutrition, but all too often they do not know how to translate that into actions they can or should take in the grocery store and in the kitchen.1 -
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KetoneKaren wrote: »Don't I remember that it was actually ketchup that was a vegetable?
I remember when a magazine, Time, I think, ran a photo of a bottle of ketchup and the caption:
"Now a vegetable."
So sad.
That would have occurred in 1981.
Back in the '80s (a bit later), a teacher of mine had this poster -- I always wanted it:
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CipherZero wrote: »I've contended for a long while now that senior year of High School should be Life 101. Subjects matter includes:
- How to balance a checkbook.
- Why credit cards are a trap
- Situational awareness & self-defense
- Comparison shopping 101
- Resume writing
- Deciding what you really want in your career (should start freshman year and yearly updates)
Oh man, i agree with all of this, especially the resume writing! Kids these days don't know how to spell, they don't have to learn when their computer spell checks everything for them2 -
I didn't read the entire thread, so I apologize if I repeat anything. Unfortunately, the USDA has a big influence in schools. It would be tough for teachers to provide a proper curriculum without emphasizing on My Plate, which still encourages people to eat the same amount of grains as vegetables (and more grains than protein) - not saying grains are bad, it's just not necessary to eat that much. And even if teachers taught it differently, the cafeteria provides food that are not nutritious at all. Kids learn most through behavior, not words.
It would be ideal if kids learned more about nutrition at home. That doesn't work for low income families living in food desert areas and live paycheck to paycheck. School food is usually the only time many kids get to eat all day. It's part of a much larger system that I won't get into because it makes me so angry.0 -
I just have to tell this story..
My 81 year old father in-law who doesn't think much of the younger generation to begin with, went into the supermarket and asked the "young lass" where the fresh beetroot was, she gave him a quizzical look at directed him down the canned isle. He once again asked for fresh beetroot, to which she replied, "but beetroot only comes in cans". He tried educating her, long story short she stood by her claim and he left empty handed.
I once asked for a 1/2 kilo of bacon, the young lad had no idea what i was talking about. I had to say 500g for him to understand. oi oi oi1 -
3. "Big Ag", by which I can only assume you mean the entire US agricultural and food industries, had precisely no input into the nutrition guidelines. Neither did the schools. The process was purely political.
You don't think Big Ag is involved in politics?
I haven't seen a school lunch tray in a long time - but I know it didn't match the general nutrition information we were taught in the classroom. I hope that has changed a good deal, but I am afraid to know the truth.0 -
3. "Big Ag", by which I can only assume you mean the entire US agricultural and food industries, had precisely no input into the nutrition guidelines. Neither did the schools. The process was purely political.
You don't think Big Ag is involved in politics?
I haven't seen a school lunch tray in a long time - but I know it didn't match the general nutrition information we were taught in the classroom. I hope that has changed a good deal, but I am afraid to know the truth.
Perhaps you should go check out meals at your local schools before speaking on things of which you are ignorant.1 -
3. "Big Ag", by which I can only assume you mean the entire US agricultural and food industries, had precisely no input into the nutrition guidelines. Neither did the schools. The process was purely political.
You don't think Big Ag is involved in politics?
I haven't seen a school lunch tray in a long time - but I know it didn't match the general nutrition information we were taught in the classroom. I hope that has changed a good deal, but I am afraid to know the truth.
Perhaps you should go check out meals at your local schools before speaking on things of which you are ignorant.
I just talked to some mom's at my office - sounds like the school lunches are even worse than before, my hypothesis was correct. So now that I corrected my "ignorance", let me ask you again.
You really think that Big Ag is not heavily involved in politics?1 -
3. "Big Ag", by which I can only assume you mean the entire US agricultural and food industries, had precisely no input into the nutrition guidelines. Neither did the schools. The process was purely political.
You don't think Big Ag is involved in politics?
I haven't seen a school lunch tray in a long time - but I know it didn't match the general nutrition information we were taught in the classroom. I hope that has changed a good deal, but I am afraid to know the truth.
Perhaps you should go check out meals at your local schools before speaking on things of which you are ignorant.
I just talked to some mom's at my office - sounds like the school lunches are even worse than before, my hypothesis was correct. So now that I corrected my "ignorance", let me ask you again.
You really think that Big Ag is not heavily involved in politics?
Second hand information is unreliable at best. And you should really approach your local district, as local districts make the final decisions.
I maintain that the current federal school food program was designed by health activists without much input from anyone; not farmers, not food producers of any sort, and certainly without schools.
If you have specific complaints about specific companies influencing specific rules to the detriment of the public, please do share them.0 -
My local school district has meals online. Maybe you could look yours up if interested (and share if they are indeed so horrible). I thought ours were fine given the various goals and that they are aimed at kids, but perhaps you have more rarified expectations.1
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Christine_72 wrote: »I'm still amazed that you guys have change rooms, showers and gyms in your schools. We never even changed clothes before PE lessons, we exercised in the clothes we came to school in.
We exercised in our school clothes in Elementary school. In middle school and high school, we had lockers, showers and PE clothes. Elementary school PE was just called "recess" and you were allowed to play pretty much whatever game you wanted; middle school was more organized/regimented - you had coaches, they taught organized sports and administered fitness tests. In high school, I was involved in interscholastic sports year-round (played football, basketball and ran track & field), so that made up my PE requirement. If you were an interscholastic athlete, PE was always 6th period (last class of the day) and practices always ran far beyond school hours into the late afternoon/evening.
I was never a stellar athlete - actually I was very awkward and uncoordinated in elementary school and got made fun of a lot - but PE was always my favorite class of the day. Even in college I always took at least 1 (sometimes 2) PE classes per semester just to break up the classroom time and add some fun to it.
I think it's pathetic that some schools have eliminated PE classes, and I think it does a great disservice to the kids in many ways. We're failing our children by not teaching them the importance (and the enjoyment) of physical activity and although I firmly believe that "you can't out-train a bad diet", I think that the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of industrialized countries has a lot to do with the increases in obesity. I'm of the opinion that PE should be one of the last programs cut in schools.1 -
I just want to say that we had a "home-ec" class in my high school with version 1 and version 2 (advanced).
Most people only take home-ec once because they don't have any other elective they want to do. I took home ec for 4 years (the last two without credit because they wouldn't give me credit for taking it again).
In our advanced class we went over SO many things. How to file our taxes, how to budget properly and spend within your means, how to determine whether or not you can afford something, how to create a meal plan and shop for it accordingly, how to pick the best prices on food items, how to save money when possible, how to fix small household appliances/sew/etc., how to properly clean your living space (top to bottom, left to right, what to use, what not to use, how to make your own cleaning products, etc.), food safety and sanitation (what can be stored, left, etc. where and at what temperatures), all about calories, how to determine how much we need each day, how to schedule our meal plan that fits that, how to cook atleast 10 meals for ourselves (scrambled eggs, pasta, biscuits, pizza crust, ice cream, roasting veggies, salads, tortillas (tacos), etc.), all the knife skills, measuring skills, etc.
I mean this class seriously taught me SOOO much about adulting. As someone with OCD i think i did extremely well and enjoyed the structure of this class and the passion my teacher had. While i didn't learn about macro nutrients, micro nutrients, the ways that each are broken down and assimilated, etc. I certainly learned enough!
In my actual biology class i believe we did go over some of this stuff, but nothing specifically about nutrition. I did learn what ATP was, that the mitochondria was the powerhouse of the cell, etc.
I think if everyone had teachers as passionate, caring, and interested in these topics as we are it would be completely different!
My ideal situation would be: a class all about nutrition, food prep (cutting skills, cooking skills, shopping skills, food safety skills, etc,) where each Friday the kids in the class prepare a healthy meal in bulk for the lunch room. It would give them practical use of their learned skills, develop pride and encourage participation, and give students the skills they need to provide for themselves when they move out on their own.
I can not even begin to tell you how many people i know who are not only ignorant about nutrition, but also about how to shop, cook, serve food.6 -
@rainbowbow Home Economics is an undervalued class (as is shop) these days. Practical skills are taught in both that would stand young adults in good stead.
I leaned about nutrition formally in elementary school (repeatedly), 9th grade health, and college health. The info stuck well enough that i recall it all these years later, but it didn't prevent me from eating too much food in the interim.
I don't think educating people about nutrition is ignored; rather that is pretty common for students, not seeing the impact of these decisions on their immediate lives, to tune out when it's presented, or to just decide it isn't important to them to use.1 -
Christine_72 wrote: »I'm still amazed that you guys have change rooms, showers and gyms in your schools. We never even changed clothes before PE lessons, we exercised in the clothes we came to school in.
We exercised in our school clothes in Elementary school. In middle school and high school, we had lockers, showers and PE clothes. Elementary school PE was just called "recess" and you were allowed to play pretty much whatever game you wanted; middle school was more organized/regimented - you had coaches, they taught organized sports and administered fitness tests. In high school, I was involved in interscholastic sports year-round (played football, basketball and ran track & field), so that made up my PE requirement. If you were an interscholastic athlete, PE was always 6th period (last class of the day) and practices always ran far beyond school hours into the late afternoon/evening.
I was never a stellar athlete - actually I was very awkward and uncoordinated in elementary school and got made fun of a lot - but PE was always my favorite class of the day. Even in college I always took at least 1 (sometimes 2) PE classes per semester just to break up the classroom time and add some fun to it.
I think it's pathetic that some schools have eliminated PE classes, and I think it does a great disservice to the kids in many ways. We're failing our children by not teaching them the importance (and the enjoyment) of physical activity and although I firmly believe that "you can't out-train a bad diet", I think that the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of industrialized countries has a lot to do with the increases in obesity. I'm of the opinion that PE should be one of the last programs cut in schools.
Yep, I'd agree PE should be one of the last things to be cut. I also think it should be made challenging for the kids. Jr high and H.S. kids strolling around a track at the pace of a great grandmother while looking at cell phones isn't PE.3 -
How do you think PE should be structured? In junior high it was required for us, and basically went through a bunch of units that exposed us to various sports (track, tennis, gymnastics--my favorite, because I did gymnastics as a kid, volleyball, basketball are some I recall). Also, some calisthenics (don't recall if that was a unit or what -- I also know it was a big part of gym in elementary school, which was not every day but a unit or once a week or something, don't really recall). There was also some reading and written work. I hated gym in jr high, because I hated being forced to do sports I was bad at (I liked it when we were doing the things I liked, but over the course of the year that was a minority of the time).
In high school it was required for 2 years, and you got to choose a sport. I liked it then but quit as soon as I could since I was much more concerned about getting in the classes I needed to look good to the right colleges. The problem was I just did the things I knew I enjoyed. My sister had a scheduling conflict and ended up taking weight training because nothing else at the time she wanted was remotely something she could stand. She had no expectations for weight training and was the only girl in the class (this was the '80s, for what it's worth), and really enjoyed it and has used what she learned often since then. I wish I'd taken it back then.
I like the unit concept to expose people to things, but I'd try to make it more educational and definitely include stuff about why cardio, why strength training and, of course, exposure to weights along with different cardio activities or sports. (I also have a personal bias toward less team sport stuff, which is what I really hated.)
On the home ec stuff, I don't think we had it in high school, but maybe was just unaware, as it's not something that would have crossed my mind to take. (I know we had it in jr high.) A requirement was personal finance or economics, though -- economics was what you took if in honors classes, but personal finance always seemed like a valuable class and did things like budgeting. I can see meal planning stuff fitting in easily there.
(To the extent we talked about nutrition it would have been in health which was in jr high, along with STDs and drugs. I do know we learned about food groups in elementary school, and what a healthy meal is or how to plan one never really seemed that mysterious to me, but I don't associate it with book learning, but stuff I picked up at home, along with whatever cooking skills I had (some, not well developed) before deciding to teach myself in my 20s.)1 -
rainbowbow wrote: »I just want to say that we had a "home-ec" class in my high school with version 1 and version 2 (advanced).
Most people only take home-ec once because they don't have any other elective they want to do. I took home ec for 4 years (the last two without credit because they wouldn't give me credit for taking it again).
In our advanced class we went over SO many things. How to file our taxes, how to budget properly and spend within your means, how to determine whether or not you can afford something, how to create a meal plan and shop for it accordingly, how to pick the best prices on food items, how to save money when possible, how to fix small household appliances/sew/etc., how to properly clean your living space (top to bottom, left to right, what to use, what not to use, how to make your own cleaning products, etc.), food safety and sanitation (what can be stored, left, etc. where and at what temperatures), all about calories, how to determine how much we need each day, how to schedule our meal plan that fits that, how to cook atleast 10 meals for ourselves (scrambled eggs, pasta, biscuits, pizza crust, ice cream, roasting veggies, salads, tortillas (tacos), etc.), all the knife skills, measuring skills, etc.
I mean this class seriously taught me SOOO much about adulting. As someone with OCD i think i did extremely well and enjoyed the structure of this class and the passion my teacher had. While i didn't learn about macro nutrients, micro nutrients, the ways that each are broken down and assimilated, etc. I certainly learned enough!
In my actual biology class i believe we did go over some of this stuff, but nothing specifically about nutrition. I did learn what ATP was, that the mitochondria was the powerhouse of the cell, etc.
I think if everyone had teachers as passionate, caring, and interested in these topics as we are it would be completely different!
My ideal situation would be: a class all about nutrition, food prep (cutting skills, cooking skills, shopping skills, food safety skills, etc,) where each Friday the kids in the class prepare a healthy meal in bulk for the lunch room. It would give them practical use of their learned skills, develop pride and encourage participation, and give students the skills they need to provide for themselves when they move out on their own.
I can not even begin to tell you how many people i know who are not only ignorant about nutrition, but also about how to shop, cook, serve food.
Perhaps more people ended up in home ec classes like the one I took, rather than the one you took. Mine was pretty pathetic. Teams of kids given ingredients, a recipe, and the tools needed then set loose without instruction. We were at least supervised so we didn't burn the school down.
Most of us hadn't ever cooked before, so you know when the first recipe you try is a cheddar biscuit that it is not going to go well. I think the experience could have still worked, if the teacher had then gone over each team's work and said why it failed and how to do it right. Then, she could have had us do it again, correctly.
Anyway, I learned nothing from home ec and it was eliminated from the curriculum a year or so after I took it.
I taught myself to cook at home with an enormous cookbook my mother had - an all-encompassing one like "The Joy of Cooking", but that wasn't it. Can't think of the title just now. One day I just decided I wanted to make something for our Christmas party (I think I was ~14). I picked Galatoboureko. By some miracle it actually turned out perfectly and I decided I liked to cook. So I did.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »How do you think PE should be structured? In junior high it was required for us, and basically went through a bunch of units that exposed us to various sports (track, tennis, gymnastics--my favorite, because I did gymnastics as a kid, volleyball, basketball are some I recall). Also, some calisthenics (don't recall if that was a unit or what -- I also know it was a big part of gym in elementary school, which was not every day but a unit or once a week or something, don't really recall). There was also some reading and written work. I hated gym in jr high, because I hated being forced to do sports I was bad at (I liked it when we were doing the things I liked, but over the course of the year that was a minority of the time).
As long as there is proper instruction and supervision, I sure don't see anything wrong with this. After all, some kids don't like math, English or whatever subject and still have to take them. Having kids do things they don't like sometimes helps expand the comfort zone IMO.0 -
I don't see anything especially wrong with it in a moral sense or whatever, but making me play basketball did not do anything to help me become a more active person -- if anything, the opposite. I was lucky that I already liked plenty of physical activities, like biking and running and x-country skiing and swimming and (as mentioned) gymnastics (although I never did that after my childhood and pre-teen years), as well as others. If the goal is to get people to have active lifestyles, I don't think it was particularly successful, so just like mine was wouldn't be my suggestion for what a good PE program should be, although I don't think it harmed me. (I also suspect my fellow students ended up fat in numbers consistent with the national average).0
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